Traditionally, the teaching of foreign languages has taken place in the school classroom where a teacher instructed students in their presence and measured their progress through written and oral examinations. With the advent of computer networking, the classroom has moved from the schools to the Internet, in particular, the World Wide Web (“Web”). Accordingly, students now can learn to speak and write in a foreign language online, i.e., over the network, by using a computer system to connect to servers and Web sites on the network that offer language-learning courses and software.
A difficulty confronting online language-learning courses, however, is that some students may not persist with self-taught instruction if left to learn the foreign language alone. Moreover, proficiency in a foreign language comes with much practice; an occasional visit to an online language course is likely to prove inadequate. Thus, a successful online language course should be able to entice students to return to the Web site to continue their language education.
Thus, there remains a need for a system and a method that encourage students to practice using a foreign language and that therefore overcome the aforementioned difficulties associated with learning a foreign language over the network.